The 10 best productivity tools for developers

The function of a productivity tool is to help with focus and getting things done quicker and better. However, when it comes to software development, developers have specific goals relating to code management. Here we list the 10 best productivity tools for developers. Some of them are more general tools to improve your environment, while others are specific to the coding process.

Turn your to-do list into a game. This app lets you create to-do lists to track your goals, including coding ones. As you progress through your tasks, earn rewards, like coins or pets, to motivate you. Once you’ve signed up, create your character and then stipulate your daily tasks, your to dos as well as your habits, both bad and good ones. Good habits earn you rewards; bad habits earn you penalties. Plus, if you code in a team, you can link all the team members’ tasks together and plan a group quest. This tool can also be used to develop other useful habits as well – such as exercising more or eating healthily.

At times we’ve all disappeared down the the Internet rabbit hole. One minute you’re looking up an issue on Stack Overflow and an hour later you’re researching the likelihood of aliens setting up a base camp on Earth. Here’s a productivity tool to plug those rabbit holes. ‘Cold Turkey’ lets you restrict your access to specific desktop applications, websites or even the Internet. You set your own schedule and limits. You can even block specific Google searches like the one you’re always doing on ‘unicorns’. You also can set the timer, making managing your productivity time easier. And here’s something cool: you don’t have to guess where you spend your time; just enable the statistics feature to keep track of your biggest time wasters.

Find a specific line of code in a large document with this tool. Think how much time one can waste searching for a line within thousands of lines of code to understand why this tool is great to reduce frustration. No surprise it ranks among the top productivity tools for developers.

The interface mimics a code editor, where you can add your coding tasks to the playlist you’ve selected. This tool increases productivity by visually linking the music website with your work. The playlists vary in length, though most are instrumental.

Track the time you, or your team, spend on various projects with Clockify. You can also check how productive you’ve been by looking at your data weekly, monthly or yearly summaries. Plus, Clockify lets you calculate billable hours, if you’re a freelancing developer.

This is a cool developer tool to adjust the colour of your display to adapt to the time of day – warm at night and like sunlight during the day. Tell f.lux what kind of lighting you have, and where you live. Then forget about it. f.lux will do the rest, automatically. The idea behind this tool is that warmer colours help you relax, whereas light-blue colours improve alertness.

If you want to focus or relax, the Rainy Mood tool is a good way to go. It lets you hear the soothing sound of rain falling. This could be ideal if you work in a noisy, stressful or open-plan office. You can listen to the sounds directly via the website or download the Android or iOs app.

This is a popular, open source, web-based bug tracking system. It’s built on PHP and supports Linux, Windows and OS on the server side. MantisBT is compatible with most browsers. Basically, it’s used to track software defects and report them, but you can also use it like a project management tool and issue tracking system (it can record changes you’ve made to various issues).

In conclusion, this piece has covered the 10 best productivity tools for developers. Because programming is such a lucrative and in-demand field, new productivity tools are frequently being developed. If you’re keen to find out more about programming, consider enrolling on one of HyperionDev’s part-time online coding bootcamps inFull Stack Web Development, Mobile Development or Software Engineering.